


First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 28: A Game Of Spies

by SkiesOverTokyo



Series: FirstFan NaNoWriMo Drabbles [28]
Category: First Fantasy (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Double Agents, Espionage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-30
Updated: 2018-11-30
Packaged: 2019-09-02 10:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16785349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkiesOverTokyo/pseuds/SkiesOverTokyo
Summary: First Fan goes 80s Berlin. Sorta kinda influenced by Atomic Blonde, etc.Everyone has more...normal sounding names:Tam-SashaSyl-SylviaNura-Jon.Matias-Matfey Doroga.





	First Fantasy NaNoWriMo: 28: A Game Of Spies

Berlin spread before them, the unmarked car cutting through the mid-morning commute like a shark through surf. They’d skipped from airdrop, picked the car up from one of the field agents in a warehouse on the edge of the city, bought a new set from a skinny punk in another warehouse a half hours drive away, had the car resprayed in a third, and were now looping into the city.   
Jon Hnifurson, tall, Icelandic, though his father was an American Air Force pilot and he called New Jersey, blonde, was in the driver’s seat. Had the sound on the radio up loud, a bootleg AC/DC tape shoved into the equally counterfeit tape deck. Ladas didn’t have the benefit of tape decks, nor the people beyond the wall, even in the free half of this cut-up city, good quality rock music. This Lada had both.   
  
Besides him, black sunglasses pulled down against the weak winter sun, black hair in a messy short bob, turning the cassette over in black gloved hands, Sylvia. English, though she spoke at least six languages, an Oxford graduate. MI6 had picked her up in Mexico City. File the size of a airport novel, and rumours were as much of a page turner.   
“After this, I’m putting Ultravox on. I have no idea how you can listen to this, Jon. It’s bonehead crap.”  
“It’s good to drive to. Keeps you alert.”  
“It makes me want to throw the tapedeck out.”  
“Suit yourself.”  
A click, a deft snatch of the all-black _Back In Black_ case from black gloved hand  
“Put your English pretty boys on, then.”  
  
They turned onto one of the main roads, drum-machine kick and baritone echoing through the car as Sylvia settled back into the seat, humming along, fingers drumming out the rhythm on the dashboard.  
“This is the perfect music for this city. Mysterious, sad, at once modern and classical.”  
“It’s not even written for this city. It’s called _Vienna_ , Sylvia.”  
“Shut up, Jon.”  
She rummaged, found a set of typewritten notes among the tapes, as the song faded out, and they turned, once again, this time onto a less busy, somewhat gloomy street, lined with run down flats.  
“We’re nearly there, so…I’ll let you play one song, Jon.”  
  
Jon grinned, popped Ultravox out of the machine, and rummaged in the box  
“Ah, the generosity of Sylvia Jones shows no bounds. Motorhead?”  
A sigh.  
“Oh, go on. Any reason?”  
Jon shrugged. Checked the mirror.  
Black VW camper, about three or four back. East plates. Could be nothing.   
“I mean, they’re pretty much the only rock band I like, so go for it…”  
Clicked the cassette into the deck.  
Traffic ahead thinned, bus trundled past.  
Lolloping bass lean-in.  
  
Without warning, he slammed his foot on the accelerator, and the car surged forward, cut between two lorries, and roared down the street, ignoring the incredulous honking.   
VW. Followed, crashing its way through a hapless Lada. Someone had attached roll-bars to the front of it so it cut, not unlike a cowcatcher, past the lorries, and gave chase.  
Big and fast and nasty. Custom job. More an APC than a hippy van.   
Lemmy growling in time with the lada engine.  
Tricks up their own sleeves. Some mad Berliner had shoved a salvaged Jag engine inside this beast, lightened the hulking bodywork, run the entire thing on Italian suspenders. It handled like a fucking Ferrari.   
VW kept pace.  
47 fire, ping past in their ears.  
Left, screaming along the side of the wall,   
Right. Berlin lay before.  
Right again.  
Left-right-left  
VW clung limpet. More gunfire.  
  
Sylvia grinned up at Jon, realising that, bit by bit, overshoot by overshoot, they were spiralling around their destination, reeling it in.  
“Want me to deal with our friends?”  
“Safely.”  
“Of course safely. What do you take me for? We’re on the same side, don’t forget. I’m doing things by the book.”  
Shoved her seat back, rolled over.   
Browning in left hand, boot hatch in other.  
Open. Three quick silenced shots. Barely blinked.

  
The VW’s front tyres exploded.  
Sparks.  
Ground to a halt.   
Another off-target 47 burst.  
Back upright, holstered pistol.  
“Which book would that be?”  
“One of the 007 novels. On the left after two left turns. Hopefully our friends don’t follow us.”  
  
The lift up from the carpark was silent. To anyone else, this would look like some non-descript office building-the shell that hid the organisation simply known as Western Intelligence Gamma was a herring export company, complete with several warehouses around Berlin.   
Down corridors, escorted by two burly US Marines that seemed there more to keep an eye on both of them than for their own protection. Stopped by a door. Knocked.  
A man with enough metal on his chest stepped out, nodded at both of them, and led them down another corridor. A metal gate greeted them. Three keys came out.  
Walked through, locked behind them.   
“So, General Cave, what are you keeping in here? Kong? Dracula?”  
The tall man ignored Sylvia, kept walking.  
“Kong. Definitely Kong.”  
  
A door, manned by two men in full fatigues and body-armour.  
“They’re here to see _him_.”  
Two curt nods. Three keys out, but this time, their current guards swapped with the two heavier armoured men, and they continued down a corridor, turned, heard the door clang shut and lock.  
Up ahead, another door, but this one opened at a push, and they stepped into a darkened room, lit only by the light of another. An interrogation room, into which one could see in, but not out of, albeit one turned into a makeshift living space. A few armchairs, a bed, a bookcase, a table. In one of the chairs, a young man sat, baggy leather jacket around him, bare feet up on another chair, a copy of _Time_ magazine in thin fingers, a cup of tea on the table.  
  
A woman with close cropped hair sat in a chair, reading from a clipboard, but stood and saluted as the group entered, the two soldiers taking up posts either side of the door.  
“They’re here to see him?”  
General Cave nodded.  
“Is that wise?”  
Cave’s expression turned serious, if his face could be any more so.  
“Without him, Matfey Doroga and his gang of thieves and soldiers of fortune can sell the Declaration of Independence to Moscow, the Crown Jewels to Khomeini, and as many nuclear weapons as they can get their hands on to the highest bidder. We cannot allow him to do that. That man, if you can call him one, would happily start World War III to turn a profit.”  
  
The woman sighed.  
“But Bargeld is just as slippery. You can’t make a boy…a man who believes in nothing believe that he can change something.”  
“You can change anyone’s mind with the right leverage.”  
A click, and the door of the room between the two opened, Jon and Sylvia ushered into it, the door locked.  
“Well, here’s time to see if your hunch is right.”  
“Trust me, Jon. I think we can…do this?”  
The other door clicked open, Jon turning the handle, and quickly stepping into the room, Sylvia in front of him, closed it behind him. Another click.  
  
The man had stood up as soon as they entered, and remained standing, placing the copy of _Time_ into a magazine rack, as they wandered into the room. He had made himself at home, this much was true, or been made to make himself at home more like. A carefully removed reproduction of a renaissance painting of an Archangel on one wall which he’d clearly pulled out of a magazine. He smiled wanly.   
Closer to, he seemed both painfully young, and older than his years, dark circles under hooded eyes that seemed to follow you around the room even when stationary. Bangs of hair fell either side of a round, boyish face. Difficult to think of this young man as dangerous, let alone an information broker and moonlighting thief and confidence trickster running in around the low twenties on Interpol’s most wanted.  
  
“Take a seat” he said, and waited till both of them had sat on a battered sofa before picking the one on the other side of the table, pulling his knees under him and wearing the leather jacket over his shoulders, the shoulder-cut counterfeit _Metallica_ t-shirt hanging off a lean, muscular figure and exposing pale, skinny arms. He reached over and poured another cup of tea, adding a small handful of sugar cubes, and milk.  
“Can…I get you a cup of tea? It’s one of the few luxuries these bloody Yanks let me have, and none of them drink it.”  
An exchange of looks.  
“Oh, please, can I at least have some pleasantries before you play good cop bad cop. Let me guess….”  
He leaned across the table, childish grin on his face, pointing at Sylvia.  
“You’re bad cop. I know you. You were in Mexico City. You used to work for the Americans as a clean-up girl, and it went wrong and they left you floundering out like a fish in a drought. MI6 found you rotting in a prison in the worst part of the city, sprung you, and cut a deal. Now you clean up mistakes like me with words and gestures not bullets.”  
Turned, pointed at Jon  
“Good cop. Nice…”  
His accent shifted to a perfect copy of an East Coast American Accent, as he continued  
“Humble as apple pie boy. American, but a child of the circumstances of a Europe recovering from war. Ex-pilot, your watch gives you away, but your surveillance and map work and ability to work as one of their spies in the air slowly brought you to the bosom of the CIA. You’re used to solving problems without pulling a trigger once. Happier playing chess with men rather than fieldwork.”  
  
A soft clap from Sylvia  
“You _are_ good. I remember you from Mexico, Sasha. But you’re lying. You know that, because you don’t make mistakes that bad. Not the Fox of Berlin. You know what really happened. As for Jon, you really are clutching at straws, and making a bad hand of it so we don’t bother you with anything.”  
She leaned over the table.  
“The fact is, there is no good or bad cop. Not this side of the glass anyway. And if we’re going to have this conversation, you’re going to stop your “police in different voices” stich.”  
  
A pause  
“Fine.”  
A soft German accent, filed down by years of transatlantic travel. He seemed to sit up straighter in his chair, sipping his tea, not speaking again till he’d emptied the cup and poured another.  
“So what can I do for you? I assume you’ve not come here to play tea party or you’d have humoured me and actually had a cup. You want something. Or something I know. I’ve had no shortage of visitors to my little…oracle of Berlin. Generals, a few spies like you. You all take things from me.”  
A sip from his tea.  
“All I did, when I was outside, was buying and selling information. Information has its own price, so it was more collecting and swapping, like baseball cards. Occasionally I did legwork for it but-“  
A click, Cave’s voice amplified.  
“Bargeld, you’re a terrible liar. You stole hundreds of docum-“  
“I’m not talking to you again.”  
He made a rude gesture at the false wall.  
“I stole information. Fine. Take me to the fucking...Hague, or the Reichstagg, and have done with me…”  
  
A nonchalant shrug from the young man  
“But no. Because I stole as much from the Soviets, the Chinese, the Koreans, you’re happy to keep me locked in the basement, let me have my tea and poetry, and magazines, and let my network tick on, filter through to me.”  
Another sip, and he stood up, walked to the wall, and leaned against.  
“You can’t kill me because I’m too useful, and you keep me locked up so the Soviets don’t get their go on the information machine. A caged bird that sings only for you, and the West. You sit in my country, you let it rot, and you sit like a vulture atop its carcass. You kill-”  
  
“Sasha.”  
He turned, stared at Sylvia.  
“What?”  
“We need your help. Now. Please.”  
A shrug, and he wandered, unhurried, back to his armchair.  
“Either of you got a smoke?”  
Jon reached into his coat, tossed a pack of Lucky Strike and a lighter across the table, took them back as soon as he’d lit up, with a hacking cough, and taken a drag on the cigarette, to the accompaniment of more coughing.  
“Thanks. So?”  
“We need to find and stop someone.”  
“Sure. My info may be a few days old but, like I said, I keep abreast of things, even here.”  
  
Sylvia reached into the bag, produced the envelope, and carefully dealt seven images out across the table between them, watching Sasha’s expression change from bemusement to outright fear, cigarette ash falling onto the floor as he utterly failed to smoke it.  
“What the fuck are you doing getting yourself mixed up with _those_ people?”  
He picked up a picture of a young man with surprisingly delicate features, except for the livid scar that scored down his face from eyebrow to the very corner of his mouth.   
“You know what they call this man?”  
Sylvia shook her head  
“Creeping Death. Doroga is as close to the Grim Reaper as you can get. What do you want me to do? Tell you where he is? That’s impossible. It’s like trying to catch smoke with a fishing net”  
  
“We want you to track him down.”  
“Impossible.”  
He got up, switched the kettle on  
“You’ll be free if you do.”  
A shrug of those lean shoulders beneath the jacket  
“Not interested. It’s a death sentence to try and get him.”  
“Full pardon.”  
  
“Not interested. I’m not playing cowboy for anyone. People like me don’t get to ride away into the sunset. I’m not playing this game. I think I’ve had enough of this. Cave, get these people out of my sight.”  
Another exchange of looks, before Sylvia rose, and walked to the door, Jon following her.  
“We’ll be back, Sasha.”  
A curt nod.  
“And my answer will be the same. Till next time.”  
And he went back to his magazine, his tea, and quiet contemplation of being exactly where he wanted to be, as information flowed in from the four corners of the world. No-one noticed him pocket the small paperclip that Sylvia had included to hold the bundle of photographs together. A smile came to his lips, muttered under his breath.  
“This means nothing to me, Sylvia. I don’t count scores. Though the gesture is charming.”  
And slowly, with one hand examining the photographs, he began to fashion his escape.   
  



End file.
